Context of Business

Introduction

As the time is passing, the business functions and activities are also changing and developing with growing employment of new and advanced strategies regarding the business contexts, including business dissertation help. The competition have also increased with the growing number of competitors, so in order to keep maintain the business sustainability and stability, every business is focusing on their social corporate responsibilities, strategic influences and ability to retain in the business market environment with appropriate leadership techniques to respond towards the increasing competition. To describe these concepts and perspectives in a better way, the company chosen is Lufthansa Airlines which is one of the top most airline businesses of Europe. This assessment will present the SWOT and PESTLE analysis of the chosen airline and will also compare different leadership styles, amongst which an appropriate leadership style will be suggested for Lufthansa Airlines to meet their business objectives. The brief of the CSR will also be focused in this assessment regarding Lufthansa Airlines.

Task 1

Performing a SWOT and PESTEL analysis for Lufthansa Airlines

SWOT Analysis of Lufthansa Airlines

PESTLE Analysis of Lufthansa Airlines

Task 2

From the analysis in task 1, evaluating how the changes in PESTEL factors have influenced the Opportunities and Threats of Lufthansa business. Commenting on how the airline is addressing their Strengths to negate Threats and Weakness affecting their Opportunities

The Pestle Analysis in the above task have presented some most significant external and internal factors which consisted of political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental elements. The political image of Lufthansa Airlines is clear and corruption complementary. Camilleri (2018) stated that the Lufthansa Airlines have a very highly qualified workforce which is a high level saving for them and it can create high trade volume with high beneficial taxation systems of that region which can give many new opportunities to grow. According to Christodoulou and Cullinane (2019) European region have a really very good rates of their literacy which is quite beneficial for the airlines for making the customers understand their services.

There is a threat for Lufthansa Airlines is the growing competition in the European region which can be overcame by the technological elements of Lufthansa Airlines where they have been provided a good R&D budget by the government itself and apart from that they have a very strong, quick and smooth connectivity to all the busiest ports by their logistic hubs. The next big threat for the Lufthansa is the continuous rising of the fuel prices, strict labour laws implemented by the government themselves and the demands of the workforce is also getting very demanding. In this regards when Lufthansa is making its strategies, the helpful thing is the transparency of the government laws. Amankwah-Amoah (2020) noted that there are some specialised courts also for getting a quick fix of any issues reading these matters. So collectively all these PESTLE factors are somehow helpful in mitigating the threats of Lufthansa Airlines presenting new opportunities for them.

In relation to the SWOT analysis, all the threats and weaknesses highlighted can be remitted by the strengths creating new opportunities for Lufthansa Airlines. The first threat for Lufthansa in this high competition is their position of one of the high cost airlines as all the other airlines are very much cost effective but this weakness gets resolved by all the high class and high quality in-flight services provided by Lufthansa (Poza-Casado et al. 2020). When there is such a high competition is the market, Lufthansa kept holding the position of one of the largest airline brands by focusing on serving their customer high-end travel experiences starting from on-board to departing facilities. And this has been easy for Lufthansa with such a huge workforce of more than 100,000+ employees working best at their levels (Petrauskiene et al. 2020).

There is a major weakness of Lufthansa is their strained relationships with their workforce which sometime shave hampered their functions but this can also be resolved as the government labour laws, employment standards and the increasing demands of the workforce can be tackled by the transparency in the regulation of Lufthansa regarding employment and labour. The transparency will bring a clear vision of what plans Lufthansa have for their employees and their future. In this case, if any question arises from the workforce regarding their matter, Lufthansa will be able to answer all those without any hidden facts and figures. All these things together brings new opportunities for Lufthansa to grow more and in this regards the use of Eurowings instead of Germanwings have already started to cut the high costs, saving more to emphasize the focus of making the services better and trying to remove the threat of being one of the expensive airlines (Ponds et al. 2018).

Task 3

Comparing and contrasting the different styles of leadership. Suggesting an appropriate leadership and management style for Lufthansa Airlines

While running any business, the leadership style which was followed by the business matters a lot because the leadership style defined how the workforce of that business is efficient and effective in their performances. All these work differently through different techniques as briefed below -

Authoritarian leadership – in this style the leader is allowed to impose the outcome and expectations on the workforce where one person is responsible for regulations the functions and turn out to be a successful organisation and the others are just there to follow that leader (Pereira et al. 2021). One disadvantage here is that it is a very time taking process since all the responsibilities are on one person but this is also an advantage since there is only one decisional person so there are the lowest chances of mistakes here.

Participative leadership – this style is mainly rooted for the democratic style of leadership where all the individuals are invited to participate in the leading tasks. The essence of this style is to involve the whole team members in the decision making process feeling them engaged, motivated, included and contributed. Hunt and Fitzgerald (2018) suggested that one advantage of this style is it increases employee retention and satisfactions whereas a disadvantage is that the decision making process becomes time consuming due to so many participants.

Delegative leadership – Gobaw (2017) noted that this style is also named by the name of laissez-faire leadership which mainly focuses on the delegated initiatives for the team members while assigning those tasks to function this style can work best if the team members are also competent and can take any responsibility preferring to make them engaged in individual works. It has a positive side where it creates appositive work culture and environment but the negative side is that it is difficult to adapt (Manoleet al. 2018).

Transactional leadership – Vinod (2021) stated that there are transactions in between the leader and the followers in the forms of rewards, punishments and other benefits and facilities exchange. In this style the relation between the leader and the team members is of “give and take” policy. One major advantage of this leadership style is that it creates specific, time bound and measurable goals to be achieved but the disadvantage of this style is that it creates followers more than upcoming leaders from the employees.

Transformational leadership – As highlighted by Flin (2019) in this style the leaders is bound to inspire the employees and the team members with his/her own vision and creation and encourages them to add on them from their own ideas and creativity to achieve what is targeted together for achieving. One major advantage in this style is that it places very high values and ethics to the employees and team members from the corporate vision but the disadvantage of this style is that sometimes in this style the leader can deceive the employees if not performed according to the needs and requirements.

All these leadership styles have their own pros and cons and works differently in their own way. In case of Lufthansa Airlines the leadership and management style which might work best is the Transformational leadership style as the main focus of this style is to create a role model for the employees by the leader. The workforce has a standard in front of them which they must try to reach or create new standards this leadership style has a motivating nature for the team members and the other employees who are not in the teams too.

Task 4

Recommending a suitable leadership style that will help to meet the business objectives of Lufthansa Airlines with justification

Leadership style is that that major element in a business functioning which defines that how the workforce of that organisational will behave and what quality of their performances can be gathered. Ivanova (2018) noted that the Leadership style not only helps in forming and shaping the employee workforce but also develops the leaders on their own since as much experience will be gathered by them the more influential and efficient they can develop their team members and the workforce. The primary objectives of Lufthansa Airlines is to become a cost effective airline organisation because even after trying to lower the costs of the journey of a flight, the prices are still quite high as compared with some other leading airline businesses (Lufthansa German Airlines, 2020). And this high price can be noted as a drawback in the competitive market.

Another objective is to amend their strained and disrupted relationships with their workforce. This happened due to the changed government laws regarding the employment of people and workforce wage laws and rates which Lufthansa have not met the standards properly (Lufthansa Group for Business, 2019). So to resolve this issue and achieve the objective of a healthy and peaceful workforce relationship, Lufthansa needs to be more specific and transparent with their employment related regulations along with tactfully handling the increasing demands of the workforce. Lufthansa have always targeted to achieve the position of one of the best leading airlines business company which to some extent they have achieved also. But from the past few years many other airlines services started to evolve and penetrate in the market giving tough competition to Lufthansa.

Leadership style with justification

To achieve all these objectives and many more on the list, the leadership and management style should be a suitable one that could match the business function pattern and can also help in achieving the targeted objectives and goals. Regarding this the best suitable leadership style chosen can be the Transactional Leadership style along with a little bit of the Transformational Leadership style too can be of more help. After analysing the desired objectives of the Lufthansa Airlines, the transactional leadership can be stated to be suitable because in this style the leader is mainly gets all the jobs done by transacting items and facilities with the employees which encourage them to work more. The main motive of this style is to create a leader-follower relation through the means of rewards, benefits, punishments and other exchanging items. Baxter and Srisaeng (2018) stated that this give & take relation allows the leader to set the standards and goals among the employees so that they can be motivated to reach to them in compliance with rewards or if failed there will be a fear of punishment too. All these components push the employees to establish the routines and procedures to follow in an efficient manner. Slowly this turns out to be a transformational style as the leadership goes on and helps in shaping the workforce into and energetic, enthusiastic and operative workforce. The advantages of this style are:

It will eliminate all the confusions that arise in the command chain where the leader of Lufthansa instructs the workforce (Lin et al. 2018)

It will give motivation to the Lufthansa workforce in the form of reward system which will ultimately improve the productivity

The present task implementation system is found to be quite complex but with this style that system will be easy to create and follow by the employees (Lufthansa Group for Business, 2019)

The disadvantages of this style are:

Since all the tasks and activities are directed by the leaders, the creativity and innovative thinking will somehow get minimised by this style

In this style any kind of empathy is not valued

This style creates only followers and not any further leaders from the employees because they don’t get chance to think of their own restricting their thoughts and ideas to be exposed and explored

Task 5

Commenting on the Corporate Social Responsibilities of Lufthansa Airlines

The corporate social responsibility (CSR) is those sustainable responsibilities which every business organisation practices them among the organisation which ultimately contributes towards the society through their corporate strategies. As per Unger and Luetz (2019) the CSR strategies are those which are fully committed towards creating a god, positive and value added environment for the customers, investors, employees, environment and the society out there regarding the entrepreneurial responsibilities. In case of Lufthansa also, after analysing the above assessment, some significant picked up corporate social responsibilities are like:

The primary CSR practice of the Lufthansa Airlines is to contribute towards the environmental matters. Mäkinen (2021) stated that Lufthansa have always prioritised its corporate social responsibility initiatives and have initiated three new major measures. Firstly Lufthansa Group has turned into a CO2-neutral airline now which got effect from January 2019 (Lufthansa Group, 2019). Through this initiative the CO2 emission have been reduced to a good level protection and safeguarding the Swiss climate protection foundation. Now the passengers have an option to offset their CO2 emissions. Apart from this, Lufthansa has decided to convert their ground handling services of its Austria, Germany and Switzerland CO2 emissions into CO2-neutral operations in those places by the year 2030. According to Stevenson and Marintseva (2019) the third environmental CSR initiative is to expand the social engagement of Lufthansa Airlines in Germany and get the opportunity to volunteer the corporate tasks being a non-profit alliance world-wide.

The Lufthansa Cargo being an international airlines company has placed a great value by demonstrating their social responsibility to contribute towards a sustainable development. In this matter many humanitarian aid projects and cooperation initiatives have been spontaneously started with efficient logistic support system during the recent serious and damaging natural crises and natural disasters. Lufthansa Cargo took entry in this process so that they can ensure the best possible aids to be delivered which quick servicing when any kind of natural disastrous calamity occurs. Regarding this, in the years 2016, Lufthansa Cargo along with the German Red Cross has signed a joint cooperative treaty agreement (Chuah et al. 2020). The Lufthansa Cargo has three main sections – Cargo Human Care, Cargo Social Care and the Cargo Crisis Care. The Cargo Human Care is responsible to take care of the human needs whenever required and these facilities are well equipped with all the required materials. The Cargo Social Care service is there to take care of the social matters regarding the environmental problems and issues and is always ready to solve or minimise them as much as possible. The third section is the Cargo Crisis Care which gets activated instantly whenever there is any natural catastrophe situation to handle the consequences and tries to control the outcomes.

These two are the primary corporate social responsibilities that Lufthansa Airlines has contributed to some extent and is still continued to improve the services for better results towards the society with the feeling to contribute from their side.

Conclusion

This report is basically towards highlighting the business contexts where Lufthansa Airlines have been chosen as a European aviation company. The assessment can be summarised by stating that Lufthansa Airlines have a very highly qualified workforce which is a high level saving for them and it can create high trade volume with high beneficial taxation systems of that region which can give many new opportunities to grow. The CSR strategies of Lufthansa Airlines are those which are fully committed towards creating a god, positive and value added environment for the customers, investors, employees, environment and the society out there regarding the entrepreneurial responsibilities. The transactional leadership can be stated to be suitable for Lufthansa because here the leader is mainly gets all the jobs done by transacting items and facilities with the employees which encourage them to work more. The main motive of this style is to create a leader-follower relation through the means of rewards, benefits, punishments and other exchanging items. At last it can be said that Lufthansa being one of the most known and leading European airlines contributes a lot toward the society and environment taking care of their stakeholders too.

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